Goddesses - The Fall

Sexual content 

1 - The Flirts

‘Connie! You look like you have seen a ghost!’

‘A ghost would be fine, Dee. I could put it down to too much cheese or a raunchy kipper.’

My PA Dee was wide of the mark. I was not about to put her right in the middle of a busy hotel lounge and bar. I caught my reflection in the mirror behind the drinks. I was relieved to see I looked like I’d seen a ghost. The truth would have left my cheeks burning and given the game away. I moved conspiratorially towards her. ‘It’s much worse than a ghost. I’ll tell you later. It’s too public here,’ I whispered in her ear.

Dee could have waved at a waiter. Instead, she took my hand and headed for two vacant stools at the bar. We ignored the calls of friendly derision about girl stuff and doing things in pairs. That was good-humoured banter and came from the engineers, who were celebrating our new contract, were pleasantly drunk and probably admiring our backsides as we walked toward the bar. We had not had time to change and so we waddled on high heels, our cheeks trapped in tight business skirts and doubtless fighting for space. That was a lot of oscillating flesh. I hate such sexist teasing, but that didn’t help. The power suit is now part of the female armoury, in the world of sales and deals, and the events of the last half hour had unleashed long-sublimated emotions. The knowledge that six pairs of male eyes were taxing our backsides as we swung across the deep carpet caused a twinge of excitement, with or without my approval.

I’d been drinking, and I was in a lot of trouble.

‘I’ll get you a drink,’ Dee offered.

She nodded toward the other team members, all men, sitting nearby. ‘That lot are going to the gym or pool or whatever, in a minute. Then we can talk in private.’

I hooked myself on to the barstool, which was just too high for comfort, and in a tight skirt it needed me to hike the hem halfway up my thighs to take a sitting stance. This so was not me. This whole afternoon was so not me.

The waiter brought a couple of sodas. Dee came straight to the point.

‘Did he sign? Or are you white as a sheet because he has thought of something else with which he can jerk us about?’

‘He was making a fuss, wanted the price lower, which would send us bankrupt in six months, so I told him there was no way. If he can get someone else to do it for less, then so be it. A competitor would have to make a crap job of it in order to come in with a better price. He knows that.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He sat staring at me … like for a long time; much longer than is polite, but with a hint of a smile on his face.’

‘And?’

‘I stared back. I thought, I’ll show you. I can face you out. And after a while, we started, you know … flirting, I suppose you would call it. His smile broke into a grin and he twinkled and so I smiled and twinkled.’

My young, pretty, twenty-something PA had a fit of the giggles. I was furious.

‘What’s so damn funny? It was stupid and unprofessional of me.’

‘Come on, Connie. We have been working together for three years; three years of living in each other’s pockets, sharing hotel rooms sometimes when the budget was tight, and I have never seen you flirt! Let go for once.’

‘Ha!’ I snorted. ‘Well it happened this time! I let go.’

‘Oh dear. What happened next, little Miss Lascivious?’

I hesitated. She recited that line like smutty poetry in a girls’ school playground. Was she taking this seriously? I hedged a little more.

‘This is about to enter a personal sphere, and I don’t talk about personal things to colleagues. You know that.’

‘So why are you telling me?’

‘I shall need your advice - what to do.’

‘Then get on with it!’

She was becoming exasperated. Maybe her curiosity was reaching bursting point and she knew, woman to woman, I was going to tell her, so why was I fooling myself and dithering?

I took a deep breath and tried to hide the butterflies building in my belly. I needed to get control, but how can one have control when the tormentor is Greg, the middle-aged rave, the customer MD, who Dee declared on day one, had ‘it’, and whom I had just propositioned. Those butterflies were only partially nervousness. I knew the major problem was the signals and urges coursing through my body. I’d managed to suppress them for the last ten years, but now the dam had burst. Ten years is more than is healthy and today my excitement was that of a teenager who was going on that first date. Something in me had decided – today was the day to fight back. It was shaking me with that deadly cocktail of nervousness and thrill of the chase. I continued in a low voice.

‘He smiled, I smiled. I had two large sherries after lunch instead of coffee. There wasn’t a clear thought in my head,’ I offered by way of a pathetic excuse. ‘I told him he could buy me dinner and afterwards we could go to my room and the contract would be on the bedside table with a pen, and he could sign it, and if the decision was still too difficult, I would try to think of something to help him make up his mind.’

My voice trailed off to a whisper. Dee’s gasp drowned the last words. Was it horror or delight that her boss could fall so low?

‘It was stupid of me and I don’t know how I could have said it and now I don’t know what to do. Obviously, I can’t go through with it.’

‘You can’t? Why not? I would, in the service of the company! What higher ideal can there be?’ There was more giggling and then she thought of something nice to say. ‘I assume he took up your offer, so that is quite flattering for you, isn’t it?’

There was a pause, so I completed her sentence.

‘Flattering for me at my age, I think you meant.’

‘I would be pleased to be asked for a date by him and I’m fifteen years younger than you.’

‘Stop mocking me! It’s not funny. I’m not doing it. That wasn’t a date I agreed to. It was a screw, so if you think he is so great, you take my place.’

That wiped the smirk from Dee’s face, but for just a moment, until she thought of her answer.

‘I can’t. I don’t have the authority to sign the contract, so it’s over to you. And what is wrong with a Lilith moment?’

I knew Dee’s hobby – no. That is too weak. Dee’s passion is myth and symbolism. She’d thrown Lilith into the conversation, well knowing I would be clueless and have to ask.

‘Who’s Lilith? Obviously not Frasier’s wife from the sitcom.’

That turned the tables. I was about to boast with my knowledge of a classic TV series. She ignored my pitch.

‘Lilith, my dear, was the original woman. Most people think that was Eve, made from a bit of Adam’s rib. Chauvinistic claptrap. Before Eve, Adam got bored, so God made him a woman out of clay, just as he had made Adam. She was Lilith, Adam’s first wife. She thought she had the same rights as Adam and wouldn’t do things just because Adam said so. In some versions she complained about Adam always wanting her underneath during sex. She decided to teach Adam a lesson and seduced an archangel. She was the original power Frau.

‘Lilith was ignored by theologians, even though she is in Genesis 1:27. The Christian myth mill turned her into a witch, night demon, shriek owl and so on. She has ended up the incarnation of woman’s lust, causing men to be led astray. That’s what can happen to you if you buck the system.’

‘And you still want me to seduce Greg to get a contract? Lilith would have kicked him downstairs or seduced his priest, out of spite.’

‘Sleeping with Greg to get a contract does not count as bucking the system. That’s being a good girl. Adam would have been fine had he let Lilith have her way. She wasn’t asking for much. She wanted to be top dog once in a while. She went off and screwed another as revenge. If Greg won’t give you what you want, he will miss out on the screw of his life. You have to let him know that. If he is a good boy, he won’t be able to stand up by the time you are finished with him. He won’t have the energy or inclination to defy you ever again.’

I began to protest, but didn’t get far. Dee’s voice became authoritative and left no room for manoeuvre, not even for a boss.

‘Listen carefully, Connie. If we don’t get that contract, the firm goes bust and everyone can look for a job.’ She thumbed over her shoulder at the engineers leaving for the gym. ‘Those guys need the bonus. They have wives, children and mortgages to support. Some of them have not drawn a proper salary for two months. They have been supporting the project, at risk, so to say. But they would pick up new jobs. We, on the other hand, are only as good as our last transaction. We are stuffed without that contract and you know it. What’s the big deal? You must have screwed a bloke in the past to get what you want. Get out there, be a Lilith and show that prick what you are made from. Not clay! Womankind will admire you for it.’

‘I don’t see myself as a “Queen of the Night’’,’ I mumbled and felt a blush rise from below my stiff blouse collar.

‘You volunteered for the post,’ she told me. ‘Queen of the Night, Lilith, call yourself what you will; you are going to get a man to do what he doesn’t want to do, for no other reason than he wants to get in your knickers. Talking of which, I bet you are wearing those awful harvest festivals again.’

‘Harvest festivals?’ I weakly repeated, not getting the joke.

‘All is safely gathered in,’ she explained, but then went into practical mode, and that’s what I pay her for.

‘I’ll book a table for two in the corner and make sure the team go out this evening. We don’t want them cramping your style with lewd comments, but now we need to get you some sexy underwear at the hotel lingerie shop. If you are wearing the same brand as I saw in the swimming pool changing room last week, they are a complete turn-off. Let’s go.’

 ‘I need a drink,’ I protested.

‘No, you don’t. Not yet at least. Get gently drunk on the wine over dinner. Take it easy, though. One can misjudge things in tricky situations. Lilith was always in charge, never more than when the blokes thought they were calling the shots.’

‘One question. Suppose it’s the other way round?’

‘I don’t get you.’

‘You said, “You are going to get a man to do what he doesn’t want to do, for no other reason than he wants to get in your knickers.”’ But maybe he is hanging me out to dry over the contract, to make me do something I don’t want to do.’

She laughed.

‘You don’t look like a woman with much resistance. I think you are up for this. You haven’t admitted it to yourself yet.’

 2. The Vamp

After the shopping tour, Dee took me upstairs to my room. I followed her in a daze. She seemed to make the process of me prostituting myself for the contract so self-evident that my doubts began to disappear. If one thinks about a despicable act often enough, it soon takes on an air of normality, respectability even. She quoted a list of kings’ mistresses who had changed the course of history. Was that the same thing?

Once in the room, she made me change into the lingerie, stockings, suspenders, frilly bra and knickers and high-heeled boots that stopped just above the ankle. I wanted to change in the bathroom, but she insisted she needed to look on and give advice on body language and so on. The bathroom was too small for two.

The thong, followed by the dessous, reduced me to a quivering heap. How can clothing be so sensual? One gets turned on by imagining being a vamp.

I studied myself in a mirror.

‘It makes me look a whore. It’s the boots.’

‘Don’t exaggerate! Immodest perhaps, concupiscent even, but that’s good.’ She seemed pleased with the effect and the adjectives to describe it. Her first in English Lit seemed more useful at that moment than my business degree. She stormed ahead. ‘Don’t blame the boots. When you move, your arse is the biggest come-on ever. It’s great! Walk up and down and swing a bit – you know, hips – side to side.’

I stood and gave her my most withering look. She was not impressed.

‘Do it!’

It was a command. I did it and felt my flesh wobble, swing, be compressed by my own movements and then released by the next. The thong pulled into me. I was about to complain, stop and pull it out, but before I could, I realised women wear them for themselves, not to pull a bloke. It was a raging turn-on. I kept walking, stopped, supported myself on a chair back and let the torment give way to ecstasy. When I’d come down I looked round at my PA. Roles were reversed. She was the mistress and I was the pupil vacuuming up feelings I’d forgotten existed. I hoped I’d hidden the climax. Some hope. She sat with a cheesy grin.

‘That was good, Connie. I’m jealous.’ 

I returned the smile and was putty in her hands. She knew how to make me feel comfortable with the role she was preparing for me. One moment I wanted this adventure to happen and the next, I wanted out! Whenever the latter occurred, she took over the lead and steered me back to desire.

‘Take those knickers off for me.’

I stared in disbelief. Then I caught sight of the copious pubic hair curling from under the thong.

‘Do it!’

I started angling them over the heels of the boots, while she rummaged around in a make-up bag she had brought with her. I was aware I was sharing my sex with an employee. Was I embarrassed? Yes! Why did I do it? Because the submissive part of our plan was reducing me to a quivering heap of desire. For Dee? Hell! How would I know? I was anyone’s.

 When I looked up again, she was sitting on the low sofa, grasping a pair of scissors.

‘Stand in front of me. I have to do something with that bush.’

I went as red as a beetroot. She continued.

‘Only a woman who never expects to get laid would use your old knickers and carry that hedge round in them. You’ve obviously never had hair between your teeth.’

I couldn’t see what she was about as her head was in the way, but I sensed pubic hair flying in all directions. Then she prised my legs open and went at my lips, but with greater care, I’m glad to say. She didn’t find much there to trim, which was a relief. She kept working, though. What was really going on? I soon found out. To finish, she used a finger. I was on fire already and she was expert. My knees wobbled.

Without removing her hand, she leant back and studied her creation.

‘That’s better.’

There was a long pause, during which – well I can only say it felt nice, whatever she did. Once her fingers were back under control, she turned me slowly round, testing my thighs and then each cheek by squeezing and manipulating.

‘Not bad for an old’n,’ she said, smirking. Then in a more dispassionate voice, almost as if she were admonishing me, ‘I think you are having the time of your life. Just be careful he doesn’t get a whiff while he eats his asparagus soup. If he doesn’t last through dinner, we will never get a signature.’

I stood in the middle of the room, hands on hips, trying to look displeased with her. Dee didn’t bother to hide her mirth. I knew what she meant.

‘Am I that obvious?’

‘And how! Lilith has just entered the building.’

I could have died, but she turned me to face the mirror, slid my bra off – there wasn’t much of it – pulled me into a provocative pose, with my pelvic bone stuck out forward, legs slightly splayed and nipples pointing to the sky. The look on my face said a new life was beginning, inside me, where it counted.

3. The Contract

Dee and I arrived at the table early. She placed me where I could see the restaurant clock, and gave instruction on how much wine to drink each half hour. Dinner was great, and nearly uneventful, apart from Greg ordering asparagus soup! I had to study the stucco on the ceiling in an attempt to hide the giggles and to dispel the mad thrashing in my tummy.

Greg was delightful company and entertained without being a bore, patronising, gushy or surly. I found myself hanging on his words, studying his beautiful lips and imagining them kissing mine. I calculated I hadn’t had a man for ten years and eleven months. That did it. My hormones went into overdrive. There’s raging and there’s beyond a joke. I was now in the latter.

We were halfway down the second amazing bottle. The divine cheese and not so noteworthy biscuits were finished, but more importantly, my anxiety threshold was much too low for any girl to be safe. The wine amount had been perfectly judged. Dee’s instruction was, at this point, to take the initiative and she had made me practise the next steps with her playing being Greg.

I reached across the table and took his beautiful hand with its long, slender fingers.

‘It’s contract time,’ I cooed with my silkiest voice.

He stood up and, without a word, headed for the elevator. We seemed to wait an eternity for the ting of the arrival bell. He still said nothing.

Dee had warned me, if the lift was empty apart from us, I could expect a full-on attack and I’d have to hang on to my knickers, just for propriety’s sake, in case someone entered on the first floor. No pun intended, she assured me.

I heard the door shut and was confronted by my reflection in the mirror. The look on my face was unmistakeable. Dee had lent me a wide cotton skirt, too short for decency on Dee, who was taller than me, but shorter than anything I owned. I fell into a lascivious stance. It wasn’t intentional. The Lilith in me was taking over.

Greg was behind me. Our eyes met in the mirror. It was so tense. The electricity between us could have started fires. And he did – nothing. He started a small-talk sentence, but fortunately the door pinged for my floor and I was out, leaving him in my wake. Had he changed his mind? Had this all been for nothing? He hadn’t even tried to kiss me or grab anything.

As I slid the card into the door lock I felt drunk and confused. This wasn’t so good. Would he walk by my door and leave me high and dry? As the lock whirred, I sensed his presence behind me. I stuck my backside out and waited for the squeeze. Nothing.

We walked in and I headed for the contract. Dee had arranged subdued lighting. This was do-or-die time. I gave him the contract with a pen. He stood there, the MD of a major Baltimore construction company, drop-dead gorgeous, me dressed to kill and randy as a doe, him completely clueless. He held the back pages of the contract as though they were yesterday’s paper and should go in the bin. The bin was in the bathroom, so he replaced them on the bedside table. The man needed help. Perhaps he was cheating on someone and regretted being here. That I could respect, but then all he had to do was sign and run. Perhaps he was scared of the Lilith side of me. Maybe he feared blackmail if he were caught in a compromising situation. I couldn’t ask him. Action was needed, not words.

I remembered Dee’s mantra, slid my blouse and skirt off, walked slowly, with plenty of hip swing, towards him, knowing he could see my backside in the mirror behind me, began unzipping his trousers, smiled, and emptied my mind, lest my own hang-ups should be a hindrance. He must have been on the edge, too. He pulled his trousers up and shut the zip. I was baffled.

Dee had made me practise controlling the gag reflex, but before I had chance to try out my new-won skills, he was looking for the exit-strategy.

He finished arranging my attempt at disarrangement.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he muttered and grabbed the pen from the table and signed. I signed. He signed the second copy and I signed the second copy! Wow! Job done.

Greg turned and moved towards the door.

‘Where are you going?’

He hesitated, lost for words. I wasn’t and I didn’t need Dee’s help for my next lines.

‘Greg, don’t worry. We can do one for you, one for me and one to celebrate the contract.’

He didn’t look at me. Had I fallen … or had the Lilith in me arrived? It didn’t matter. Round two would never happen. I could no longer see him in the dimmed lighting, but heard the door click shut after he had exited.

I had a signed contract, but zero self-respect. I vowed to work on that. I didn’t deserve to feel like a slut.

4. Training Inanna

We got the contract, and completed the work.

I didn’t see the rest of the team again. They left early. I missed the plane by hours. Why lie? It was by two days. Dee thought she knew why. She convinced the guys not to go looking for me, and so when I arrived back in Middlesbrough three days late, and my boss told me I had to be on the next train to London, I was gone before anyone in the old team saw me. Dee was the one to avoid. She would require a blow-by-blow, no-holds-barred commentary.

Too embarrassing. Nothing happened. I’d given my best Lilith and Greg had fled. I stayed on in Baltimore another two days to look at the town and nurse my injured pride.

So, London it was. Strap-hanging on the Northern Line is not my idea of career enhancement, but it was a pay rise, and as we go to work to pay the bills, I’ve kept at it. Life in the London office offered no respite, no work-life balance and no sign of eligible bachelors. I’d taken a flat in Wimbledon, believing my office would be in the Morden branch. That meant no strap-hanging, one stop and always in the opposite direction to the rush hour.

I’d hardly hung the curtains when the transfer to Islington came through. Islington is more exciting than Morden, but another move, the renovation, the cost. I couldn’t face it. Out of one stop on an empty train grew nineteen stops on a packed one, twice a day.

It had been a year since I joined the sardine-sandwich party known as the Northern Line. Going to work in the morning, I had a seat, although sometimes people sat on my lap after Stockwell. Usually I could see enough to learn the station names. Some days I couldn’t see a window, and on those days I couldn’t hold a newspaper. Coming home meant standing until Clapham Common, by which time it was hardly worth taking a seat.

That fateful Tuesday evening, the Angel escalator was full to anxiety, and on the platform, I feared for my safety as ever more travellers poured on after me. I moved down the station, far away from my usual waiting spot. The next train groaned to a halt. I climbed aboard.

We reached Moorgate. As the train slowed, I could see the platform was beyond pilchard-packing proportions. Somehow, they all came aboard. I was pressed against a glass partition, which meant I didn’t have to cope with air from unwashed students, or sickly-sweet aftershave from the suits, usually gone stale by early evening. For me, the worst nausea moment sweeps in when I whiff the cheap scents some women use.

I thought the train would move off, but instead a new crowd descended to the platform and tried to board. My space was invaded is the euphemism. More accurate would be to say the man behind, who I think got on with me at Angel, was jammed against my backside, or did he jam himself against me? Plenty of both sex use the rush-hour situation to do a bit of illicit rubbing.

I wanted to smack him, but could not turn round. To be fair, there was nothing he could do to protect my dignity. Another tranche of travellers entered at Bank. Wedged and defenceless, I felt his con tours pressing against me. It was indecent, unacceptable but comfortable. Somehow, he held the crush from me and the contact was less than expected. I wondered why, if he can control the amount of contact so precisely, are we touching at all? The doors shut after several attempts and the train moved out with an electric whine. Then it hit the points and rocked for the first time. He brushed across my cheeks. I’m not sure it was a brush. It felt firmer than decent. It wasn’t his hands, because they reached forward, either side of my head, holding on to a pillar. The brushing sensation came from his trouser front! I knew I should do something, but probably the contact was an accident. No! He was brushing with each train oscillation and then he brushed more than the train swings demanded. I was sure he had an erection. I tried to make excuses for him. I ran the arguments through my mind. Poor guy! How can he help it? He must be more embarrassed than I am.

Was I making excuses for my inactivity? I felt those sensations of a year ago building in my belly and beyond. I remember Dee. What would she say?

‘Is it freaking you out?’ she would ask.

‘No,’ I reply.

‘Get a grip of yourself! Either move or enjoy it – whatever you fancy best,’ and then she would quote some goddess of promiscuity.

Am I having a Lilith moment?

Before I could answer or decide to move, the situation was resolved by fate. Fate and him seizing the moment to control the action. It was dominant male grooming and I was letting it happen. The train slowed for London Bridge. That meant I’d tolerated his disgusting behaviour for a whole station. I could feel his breath on my neck, smell an expensive musk male fragrance. Was it a fragrance? Perhaps it was him I was inhaling – the scent of a horny man. Then the train braked harder. He was thrown away from me. I regretted the sudden lack of sensation. I am disgusted with myself, but the fact is, I missed the rubbing movement. Where is he? It’s now or never. I have to send a signal. I’m thirty bloody seven, for goodness sake, and I want a cheap thrill. Is that so bad? ‘Cheap’ is disingenuous of me. So far it had cost nothing. Before I can consider further, I do it – stick my buttocks out to maintain contact, and wiggle a bit to make sure he understands. Good job I had a tight power suit on, or the desired effect may have been lost.

The train stopped. He did nothing. Why didn’t he swing back into me? I felt just a hint of a soupçon, the merest spider web of a brush. I am wiggling my bottom for Britain and the bastard is hanging me out to dry. Or, if he can’t see down between our bodies, I reason, all my posterior exercises are wasted and worse still, I now have space to turn round and slap his face. That would ruin everything. The anonymity is part of the turn-on. Suppose I know him – a friend, the husband of a friend, a colleague, my next-door neighbour? Mortifying! Keep facing the back of the train, girl, was my mantra! I heard the doors close and felt the train accelerate out the station. The motion threw him back into me. He kept firm contact, rubbing all the time. My hind work hadn’t been wasted. I remember it clearly, the huge erection trying to force my tight skirt between my cheeks. I’m dazed. This wasn’t an ending I’d expected. No point in complaining. Okay, I hadn’t envisaged this treatment, but just because you call the piper doesn’t guarantee you get to decide the tune. Why was I thinking in economics? Cheap thrill? Paying the piper. Is my subconscious reminding me of how I am behaving?

I forgot my philosophising. His breathing was quickening. I couldn’t hear him above the train noise, but his breath on my neck became pants, were faster and deeper. What had happened and more importantly, where, exercised my thoughts. The train slowed, stopped, the doors opened for Borough and he was the only one to get out. He wasn’t gone in the throng; there was no throng exiting the train, only more crowds entering. As the train pulled away I looked for him on the platform. I couldn’t see him. Of course not! I didn’t know what he looked like. The platform was already filling for the next train. I looked through the glass partition, towards the back of the train. I thought I saw Greg’s profile. Ridiculous notion. The train lurched and the head disappeared behind a knot of travellers. I was mistaken.

Elephant and Castle. It occurred to me that no one gets out at Borough in the evening. Only in the morning. All the traffic goes in the opposite direction this time of day. There was only one explanation. He was embarrassed, or more likely, scared I’d complain to the railway police. It never entered my thinking, but he had to allow for that outcome.

Stockwell. I would never see him again. Was I disappointed? I felt let down by his sudden disappearance at Borough, but disappointed? Maybe. In a way. One is always sorry when an adventure, a good film, an amazing book, comes to an end. However, I knew he got on the tube at Angel, and at what time. That was something to go on if I wanted to see him again.

Again? I hadn’t seen him once. Supposing he didn’t know what I looked like? Never mind supposing! He doesn’t know what I look like. He has only seen the top of my head and felt behind me. That isn’t much to go on. I’d have to wear exactly the same clothing and hairdo.

Oval. The train would soon begin to empty. By Clapham North my backside would be on show to whoever chose to look. Was my power skirt revealing to the world what a wanton woman I was?

Wanton woman, Loose Lilith – the alliterations flooded my mind. I turned round, my back to the glass partition. That wouldn’t help me get up the escalator at South Wimbledon. I could stay on until Morden. No escalator at Morden. Just a few steps, but the bus back to South Wimbledon would be a problem. If I had to stand, which was likely at this time of the evening on the 93 to Puntney Bridge, every seated passenger would have my besmirched backside at eye height. That thought jogged my reason. Never mind the 93. The man sitting the other side of the glass partition on this train could already see my shame.

Why shame? I’d had an adventure and my only regret was that I saw myself as a slut instead of a free spirit. History had made Lilith into a slut, a night demon. All she had done was to stand up to Adam and take what she wanted: the right to go on top and then try an archangel. How could I stop my repressed upbringing turning me into a train demon, the screech owl of subterranean London? My subconscious was well on the way to achieving that. That is how all the women in my family would see me. I shudder to think what the men would say.

 One person could help. Dee!

I got off at South Wimbledon and travelled the escalator half turned, with my derrière to the side panel. Why didn’t I just feel round the back and then I would be sure? I couldn’t. The anonymity of my sexual experience, and the fear of wearing my promiscuity openly and visible on my backside, were at one and the same time an immense moral burden and a huge empowerment and liberator. Could I cast off the shackles of a repressed sexuality, which had for me always meant a husband, house, mortgage and monogamy? I’d never managed any of them. Could I become a follower, a goddess of promiscuity? Is there such a deity? Lilith didn’t fit. She was a victim of bad publicity, but also a free spirit. I had been done to, even if I hadn’t tried to stop the doer.

I made a mental note to text Dee and ask her. She had moved me into this new arena of life with my Lilith experience. She could tell me how to proceed beyond that.

I angled myself home, turning at every corner or road to make sure that my shame or liberation (I wasn’t sure which) would not be exposed to the neighbourhood, but as I entered the front gate to the Victorian villa, long since divided into apartments, I met the landlord. He was a leery character, always looking for a reason to bad-mouth someone. Usually it was the local youth and, being twenty years beyond that stage, I was safe from his ministrations. But if he saw my dark blue sullied suit skirt, he’d have stuff on me to last a lifetime. I’d have to move to North London. That would make sense, with or without the train shame, but it would also mean the end of tube train adventures.

Would I really have to move? Couldn’t he be the first moralist I face out? My new life was only half an hour old, but I was planning for the future. I swaggered with swinging hips up the path in his direction. I felt as though I had ‘slut’ stamped across my forehead. War raged within me. It was a fight between my ovaries, pouring oestrogens into my bloodstream, while my head said ‘bad girl!’ I waited for the chiding from the landlord I knew I had earned.

‘Hi, Connie. Can’t stop. Those boys are playing football again between the cars.’ 

He went by at nearly a sprint. I assume he thought me too repressed to be fallen. We always overlook the things we consider impossible. Do I look so frigid and unapproachable that my neighbour can’t imagine a lewd act from me? Probably! That’s why my soiled power suit is so important. I’ll show them all. I’ll show his wife and tell her how it happened.

Ridiculous. I don’t have that sort of courage and she never talks to me. Thinking it over, I haven’t seen her recently.

I remember giggling on the first landing. I never thought I had the nerve to give a customer a blow job to secure a contract, but I would have. That ended in rejection. Now I’ve brought a man off on the tube. That makes the rejection less hurtful. Progress for such a repressed being.

Up the next flight of stairs, now sticking my backside out for all to see,. but the staircase was shadowy and no one came out their door.

I know! Wiggling a dark blue suit skirt in a shadowy staircase is hardly an act of emancipation. You can’t emancipate yourself when living in an outrageously-priced Wimbledon bedsit. Your life is so controlled by the rent, there is no strength left to be a rebel. And Victorian staircases are so utterly devoid of emotion, never mind eroticism. I could strip naked and pee on the landing and the cat would get the blame.

My front door. I unlocked on autopilot. I was convinced there was a massive stain for the world to see, if only they would finally look. That man had used me like a dog uses a cushion; defiled me and I wasn’t thinking of bringing him down. Will no one scream whore? Wrong. Whore comes from ‘to hire’ and I wasn’t paid.

Into the hallway and a quick turn in front of the long mirror by the coat stand. Nothing. Switch the light on. Nothing. Zip undone, two hooks and I ripped the offending article down past my knees, over my heels and held it under the light.

Nothing!

Disappointment? I suppose so. I’d say I was furious. I’d psyched myself up for the biggest emancipation of my life and now felt an emptiness that hurt. I could punish him by complaining to the police about his behaviour, but how can you call a man a criminal when there is no evidence of a crime, you don’t know what he looks like, and you have no answer to the question, ‘Why didn’t you move, scream, tell someone?’

I looked again in the mirror. My face was on fire – I was on fire. Another new life was beginning somewhere in my brain. I couldn’t turn the clock back.

It was nearly midnight before I hit the send button. Why doesn’t Dee respond? Because it was the middle of the night when you hit the send button, dummy.

Dee took two days to respond. That was two days on which I had to take a later train. I couldn’t meet him again without a strategy and without Dee, there was no strategy.